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Data Governance Challenges: Communicating

Data Governance Communicating & Marketing

By: Datasource

A Data Governance Program is a long term project that will completely alter the way data is processed at your company. Building momentum, gaining a following and showing successes will be critical for your long term success. Therefore, it’s a good practice to work with the marketing team to develop a marketing plan for your Data Governance Program.

Listed below are four separate tips for communicating your Data Governance Program to the masses.

Tip #1: Marketing for Program Success

Yes, even Data Governance require marketing.

Quite often, we think of marketing as outward facing (or customer facing) brochures, websites, emails, and the like. Rarely do we think internally in terms of marketing. However, your Data Governance Program is going to be one of the exceptions to the rule.

Strong marketing can help generate enthusiasm for the campaign and help make it more engaging and exciting to your audience.

Here are a few tips for marketing your Data Governance Program:

Find Champions: It can be tough, but finding good champions who understand the value of the program and who can promote it will truly help spread the word and bring awareness to the cause.

Sell the Program: Anyone involved with the Data Governance program needs to sell the program, the ideas, and the value at every opportunity. Get invited to department meetings and present program highlights, plans and successes. By showing people what you’re doing you alleviate concerns while building followers and momentum.

Branding: Brand the program and make sure the brand appears everywhere (yes, this could include logos, icons, flyers, etc.). It’s important for your audience to start understanding the objectives and goals of the program and see the results of your efforts. What’s even more important is that they start to associate the results with the program.

Tip #2: Create an Elevator Speech

For those of you who haven’t heard of an “Elevator Speech” or an “Elevator Pitch”, it is something designed to be delivered quickly, in the span of about 30 seconds (roughly the length of an elevator ride), to convey a message. While the concept is simple, the execution is quite the opposite. It takes a lot of energy and effort to condense a message down to its most minimal essence and make that message engaging and convincing.

Data governance is not an easy topic for people to understand and an elevator pitch really helps promote the program to the company. Your elevator pitch should easily roll off the tongue of your governors. It is best to have the entire governance council develop and practice the elevator pitch. A well-rehearsed pitch will help crystalize the value of what you’re doing and make it easy to deliver.

Remember, everyone is selling the Data Governance program.

Tip #3: Know Your Baseline Metrics

We all instinctively know metrics are important. They show us where we were and provide a benchmark against future performance. For a Data Governance program, we use metrics to justify further investments of time, energy and money.

There are a lot of different ways you can measure your program including;

All of those can be different ways of measuring your program and it’s important to be able to show tangible evidence of what you’re doing.

What is listed above is just a sampling of the ways you can measure a Data Governance Program. If you’d like to discuss further ways to measure your Data Governance program, feel free to call us at 888-453-2624 or complete the form on our contact us page.

Tip #4: Spread the News! Communicate!

Extra! Extra! Read All About It!

Chances are you may not have a town crier in your office; however, you do have a marketing department. Enlist the help of your marketing team and let’s start spreading the word. Listed below are a few of the many different ways to market your Data Governance Program.

Brochures: Develop a brochure that can be sent to all employees touched by your Data Governance program. This will help them know what you’re doing, why you’re doing it and how it impacts them. By being proactive, you’ll gain more followers and build momentum as people see how your Data Governance program relates to them.

Articles: Write articles for your company newsletter about the Data Governance Program and what you’re doing. This is a great way to inform people of your activities and educate them along the way.

Showcase your progress: Publicizing your “quick wins” is a great way to showcase the progress of your Data Governance program. This also reinforces your other marketing messages and continues to build momentum.

Annual Report: Publish an annual report of your progress. Annual reports have a funny way of validating information in a consumers mind. Take the time to write an annual report and help your Data Governance Program gain steam and really come alive.

Up to this point we’ve covered four of the Five Components of a Solid Data Governance Program. If you’ve missed any of the articles (and related videos), these links will help you navigate: